


Sugar and Spice

by Liu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Stress Baking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 22:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liu/pseuds/Liu
Summary: “You bake when you’re stressed and sometimes you give me cookies, but recently you’re giving me whole baskets each day, now I’m not complaining but are you okay?”





	Sugar and Spice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [everyperfectsummer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/gifts).



The smell is driving Barry nuts.

The day he moves in, he appreciates the homely undertones of vanilla in the air, and thinks that the previous owner of the tiny apartment must’ve been the type to collect those pricy, excessively scented candles. It’s not an unpleasant smell, per se, so he opens a window and doesn’t think twice about it.

The vanilla, however, persists for some time. When it finally goes away and Barry takes a deep, relieved breath, a hint of cinnamon tickles his nose. He spends two hours rooting through the apartment’s shelves and cabinets in search of the offending candle, but comes up empty-handed.

It fades soon enough, and Barry’s starting to think that maybe, he’s got those sensory hallucinations he’s been reading about lately.

But then, about ten days after moving in, he’s locking the front door on his way to work and a man steps out of the apartment next door. Barry feels like a gingerbread truck has just mowed him down. There’s vanilla and cinnamon and other sweet smells, and the neighbor is stuffing a plastic plate filled with the most mouthwatering cookies in the world… into a trash bag.

“What are you doing?!” Barry yelps, and the man shoots him a glare.

“Don’t need so many cookies,” he growls. Under any other circumstances, Barry would melt at the sound of a voice like that, especially when it falls from _that_ mouth, but the guy looks positively murderous, and only the fate of those poor cookies makes Barry speak up again.

“I’ll take them!” he yelps, and the guy raises an eyebrow, then thrusts the trash bag right into Barry’s hands and turns away, slamming the door of his apartment behind himself.

Only belatedly does Barry realize that he shouldn’t have claimed cookies that have already been tossed in the trash… but when he opens the bag (just to see if there’s maybe one or two that could be salvaged), it’s filled with cookies only. Chocolate chip and nuts and snickerdoodles have been haphazardly tossed together and Barry swears he hears a quiet ‘hallelujah’ playing in his head as he takes a first careful bite.

They’re so good he wants to weep, but instead, he ends up pouring as many as he can into the largest plastic container in his apartment so that he can take this gift from the vanilla heaven next door to work.

He ends up sharing a few with Joe and Captain Singh despite his careful hoarding of the precious gift. He eats his weight in vanilla and butter for the next two days, and life is starting to look pretty good despite the awful sugar-induced crash afterwards.

Barry doesn’t think much about the whole deal – he’s been told that overeager relatives or girlfriends can sometimes bake too much, even though he’s never experienced it himself.

But then, a few weeks later, the smell of vanilla wakes him up in the middle of the night. Barry dreams about a cookie monster coming after him.

In the morning, he almost stumbles over the huge Tupperware full of cookies that has been left on his doorstep.

It becomes a pattern, afterwards. Somewhat erratic, but brownies and tarts and pies appear out of the blue at least once every couple of weeks, to the point where Barry feels a little uneasy about being fed so well by a complete stranger. He settles into the routine sugar-rushes easily, though.

Until cookies appear on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, in such staggering amounts that they are once again delivered in trash bags instead of food containers. Barry shares with everyone he knows, getting more than one question about this magical secret bakery he’s been frequenting lately (and a few sour looks from the cops who think that bringing twenty triple-chocolate muffins to Captain Singh is just plain sucking up). On Thursday, there’s a heavenly apple strudel, but when Barry comes back from work that same day to find four different pies sitting right there on his doorstep, he can’t just let it go anymore.

He takes a deep breath and knocks on his neighbor’s door, steeling himself for another murderous glare. Barry only notices the sound of a mixer from behind the closed door when it turns off, and there’s a moment of complete, eerie silence before the door is yanked open and Barry’s looking into the barrel of a gun.

He yelps and takes a hasty step back, nearly stumbling over himself, but the gun’s removed before he can truly start freaking out. The neighbor guy, looking just as stormy as before, tucks the gun into the back of his pants (stained with flour, of all things), and huffs.

“What?!”

“I… uh.”

It’s pretty hard to formulate a coherent sentence after _that_ , so Barry’s grateful that the guy doesn’t slam the door in his face when it takes a few seconds for him to gather his wits.

“Look, you’ve been leaving a lot of stuff at my door these past few days and I’m not complaining or anything, but… um. Are you okay?”

That’s not at all what he planned to say, but the neighbor looks a little frantic, and not just because he pulled a gun on Barry a moment ago. There are circles under his eyes that Barry’s sure weren’t there before, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a while.

Instead of answering, the man casts a suspicious glance down the corridor, and then steps out of the way, holding the door open.

“You wanna come in, kid?”

Barry wants to protest that he’s twenty-five, thank you very much, but he decides that irritating his sugar dealer, who also has a gun, would not be wise, so he tries to smile and, against his better judgment, steps in.

The apartment’s similar to his own, only much neater, almost meticulously put together in neutral shades of grey and beige everywhere.

Except the kitchen area, which looks very much like a baking reality show exploded all over the place, sacks of flour and stacks of eggshells and milk cartons everywhere, baking sheets haphazardly tossed over the limited counter space.

“Uh,” Barry says, not sure how to approach the subject of maybe, just maybe, the guy not being exactly alright. When he glances the neighbor’s way to assess the situation, it’s a relief to find him smirking.

“Helps me think,” he clarifies and moves back into the kitchen area, whisking the beginnings of batter in a huge glass bowl. Barry can see where he’s coming from – there’s something relaxing about watching him work, all controlled, precise movements and complete focus on the task. Barry finds himself slipping onto a flour-dusted barstool, mesmerized by the process.

Well, he’d be lying if he said that the _baking_ is the only thing that captures his attention. Up close like this, in the man’s private space, Barry has the time to really look at him. He’s a lot less scary with a whisk in his hand and a splash of batter across his chest, but there’s something about him that still makes Barry’s insides tingle. His eyes are too kind for a man who just pulled a gun on someone, with laugh lines around the corners, and his close-cropped hair twists into the most perfect widow’s peak Barry’s ever seen. The barest hint of stubble gives his jawline that sharply defined look that Barry longs to touch, and the thought startles him for a moment. There’s both strength and vulnerability in the set of the man’s shoulders, in his long limbs and the way his fingers wrap around the handle of the whisk, and Barry suddenly feels like he should stay and make sure that everything’s okay with this guy.

“You should probably sleep,” he suggests – the only response he gets from the man is a shrug. After a moment, he stops whisking just long enough to glance at Barry and give him a good look into those winter-sky eyes.

“Can’t. No worries, kid, I’m a big boy.”

He says it with a wry smirk, the words dancing to a pretty sarcastic tune, but Barry must be slipping into insanity himself because he shouldn’t find that hot and yet here he is, sitting in a stranger’s kitchen, being inappropriately turned on by the sight of someone stress-baking.

“Would you like me to go?” he asks, suddenly uneasy.

“Nah. Stay if you like.”

There’s something about the way he says it that makes Barry feel like maybe he appreciates the company – but sitting here watching those long fingers fiddle with eggs is already making Barry restless, so he hops off the barstool and smiles a little.

“I can help?”

The assessing look the neighbor gives him, lingering and focused, turns Barry’s knees weak.

Eventually, the guy nods, like Barry has passed some sort of a test he wasn’t aware he was taking. “You can get the almonds.”

It takes a bit of creative searching in the chaos of the kitchen, but Barry feels unexpected peace wash over him as he prepares ingredient after ingredient to the sound of the guy’s quiet, precise commands. Barry has never really baked anything before, and the first few times, he worries about asking for more detailed instructions on something, but the man never makes Barry feel stupid or incompetent. His patient responses unwind something in Barry’s chest, some tension that he wasn’t even aware was there until it’s gone, leaving behind an odd sense of calm, and Barry’s actually unsettled to see the last baking sheet delivered into the oven.

He doesn’t know where to go from there, how to walk away from an impromptu baking session with a guy he doesn’t know at all, from this quiet, harmonious act of creation that has taken on an almost meditative quality. He turns to the guy to say something and finds him much closer than expected, watching Barry with that disconcerting gaze, not unkind, just piercing, like he can see Barry’s reluctance to leave.

The well-known vanilla scent is everywhere, stronger than ever after Barry has managed to spill some on himself. It messes with Barry’s head, makes him feel dizzy and fearless, and before he knows it, he’s reaching out and twisting his batter-stained fingers into the guy’s shirt and dragging him close.

There’s a sharp intake of breath, from one or both of them, and the guy stops barely an inch from Barry’s face.

“Hey,” Barry whispers, and it’s always sounded so stupid in all the movies, but it fits perfectly here, two strangers meeting in an unexpected place, in an impossibly perfect moment that flutters in the sweet-smelling air between them. The man studies him and up close, Barry can see something shift in those blue eyes. The guy starts pulling away but Barry’s having none of that, unwilling to part with this bubble of peace and warmth just yet. He surges forward and almost crashes into the guy, lips meeting in a hasty, misaligned touch that’s more a plea than a real kiss.

But then, oh, _then_ the guy lets out this tiny sigh and tilts his head and his hands trail sugar into Barry’s hair, and it becomes a proper kiss then, unhurried, close-mouthed, but so damn perfect that Barry feels his throat go all tight, together with his stomach and his heart.

The slow, languid pace keeps them occupied until the vanilla scent in the apartment turns all smoky, and it takes both of them a while longer to shake out of their daze enough to realize that the cookies are burning.

The man swears quietly and jumps to the oven to salvage the batch, and Barry feels like he’s been torn out of a really good dream. What is he even doing here, kissing a complete stranger? It’s insane, and he needs to go before he makes himself go even more crazy over a pipe dream of domestic bliss with someone he’s met two times in his whole life – and one of those times, a gun was involved.

“I should, uh,” he starts, backing away from the kitchen in a sudden burst of panic, but before he can properly turn away, he’s stopped in his tracks by that deep voice, almost eerily calm.

“Been twenty years since I burned something,” the man says, his back to Barry, leaning over the counter with the ruined cookies. His shoulders are set, or maybe Barry’s reading too much into this, but the gun is very visible from this angle, sticking out of the waistband of his pants like a reminder of how foolish Barry’s been tonight.

He opens his mouth to say ‘sorry’ or ‘I didn’t mean to’ or ‘please don’t shoot me’, but then, the guy turns to glance at Barry over his shoulder, and there’s unexpected light in his eyes, like… like he’s not upset about the cookies at all. Like he’s actually amused, or… or _fond_ , and Barry’s heart lurches at the thought.

“I’m Len,” he says, and that’s when Barry realizes he just spent at least twenty minutes making out (and planning a wedding) with a guy he didn’t even know by name.

It makes him laugh, and the tension cracks; instead of fleeing, he takes those five steps back to _Len’s_ side and lets himself be folded into a hug that fits so well around him that he can’t help but wonder how it would feel to wake up in those arms.

How it _will_ feel, because there’s little doubt in Barry’s mind that his slow descent into madness is inevitable, now.

“I’m Barry,” he says as he leans into Len’s solid chest, and takes advantage of the fact that there are no more cookies to burn.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://pheuthe.tumblr.com).


End file.
